


amazed at the calm sea

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, M/M, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 16:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “Where am I?” Jack asks, the words tasting foreign, barely croaking out, because this is different, this feels different.Real. That’s the word for it. It feels real.“Mr. Wright,” another voice, one that isn’t familiar, says from somewhere else, “you’re in Big Pine Memorial Hospital. Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”“No,” Jack croaks, suddenly aware that he does in fact have eyes, that they’re open and blinking, but it’s still just that little bit of light, he has no idea what’s in front of him. “I can’t see anything. Just – just dark – just dark…”





	amazed at the calm sea

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't on my list of possible things to write, but I'm glad I had a shorter idea for once, and hopefully can write the longer stuff some other time. I meant to write more this weekend but then I bought the book If We Were Villains, read it all in one day, and I've been lost in existential crisis land ever since. Which is, like, obviously the mark of a great book, but also? I'm so emo over it.
> 
> Anyway, come back to me King Falls AM so I can fully reinvest my energy in you and feel things other than pain again! Though I'm sure you'll make me feel plenty of that, too. Hope you guys like the fic, I'll try to write more soon!

There are pinpricks of light behind Jack’s eyes and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Screaming out seems like an excellent option – God, it’s dark, it’s been so dark as long as he can remember, feels like it’s always been so dark – so he does, he screams himself hoarse, even though he knows that no one will hear him.

There’s some kind of pressure on his shoulders, very tangible, and it just makes Jack thrash harder against it, because there’s only one thing that can mean. That _thing_ is here, he found Jack again, is going to get his hands back inside his brain and squeeze the last droplets of him out, Jack hasn’t been himself in so long, and knows each time that thing gets closer to him, he loses himself more bit by bit.

There’s a voice – actually, there’s more than one voice – but they don’t sound like _him,_ that monster that tears through the darkness to slash at Jack’s throat. They’re too far and distant, too obscure, and too many.

Someone’s saying his name, Jack thinks, but who else would know his name here if not the monster? He can sometimes tell that there are others nearby, others like him – he can’t see them in the drowning darkness – but he knows they’re there, can hear them shuffling. This must be them once more, letting Jack believe that he’s not alone when it’s so clear that he’s never been anything but desperately alone in this awful hell.

“Jack, please –”

Jack recognizes one voice in the throng, but he can’t say where from, it’s been so long since he can make anything out in the darkness, and he still can’t, not really, but he knows that voice.

Suddenly, he becomes aware that his body isn’t floating in what feels like empty space, that there’s something scratching against his arms, that there’s pressure against his back, that the grip someone has on his shoulder isn’t a metaphorical weight, it’s a real one, a hand, with fingers, five of them gripping tightly.

Then Jack realizes that his mouth can open, that his tongue can unstick itself from the roof of his mouth – he’s spoken, has spoken recently, but to himself, and didn’t need to open his mouth to do it, his body had been an afterthought wherever he was – but now he needed to open his mouth to speak.

“What –?” Jack started, surprised at the sound of his own voice. It’s rough, harsh, deep. He hasn’t heard the sound of his own voice in so long.

Is he not in that place? With the monster and the shadows? If he’s not there, then why is it still so goddamn _dark_?

“Oh, thank God,” the same voice whimpers from next to Jack, he’s aware that someone is next to him, maybe more than one someone, but he still can’t see anything other than light in the distance, like there’s a light on down the hall that he can quite see but illuminates his periphery.

“Where am I?” Jack asks, the words tasting foreign, barely croaking out, because this is different, this feels _different._

Real. That’s the word for it. It feels real.

“Mr. Wright,” another voice, one that isn’t familiar, says from somewhere else, “you’re in Big Pine Memorial Hospital. Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”

“No,” Jack croaks, suddenly aware that he does in fact have eyes, that they’re open and blinking, but it’s still just that little bit of light, he has no idea what’s in front of him. “I can’t see anything. Just – just dark – just dark…”

He hears a choked sound from next to him, but the unfamiliar voice keeps talking. “Okay, that’s alright. We expected that. Your eyes – there’s nothing wrong with them, exactly. You should be able to see again soon, but the way they react to light – it’s like they haven’t seen anything but darkness in years. They’re adjusting.” 

“Oh,” Jack says, the idea finally setting in that he’s in a hospital. He’s in a hospital bed. Someone, presumably a doctor, is talking to him.

“Now, if you could tell me a few things,” the doctor continues. “Do you know what your name is?”

“Jack, Jack Wright,” Jack says, feeling disquieted by saying that. He’d felt so separate from any kind of identity, felt like he’d stopped being a real person. “Where did you say I am?”

“Big Pine Memorial Hospital,” the doctor repeats and Jack quickly searches for a fact stuck somewhere in his brain, because he’s heard that name before.

“That anywhere near King Falls?” Jack asks, hesitant, not quite sure if he’s right, but the doctor replies in the affirmative. Jack lets out a long breath. “God. So I made it here after all.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” The doctor asks.

“In the world or – or wherever I was?” Jack says, still not believing that he isn’t wherever he was before, that this isn’t just some new trick the shadows learned to play on him. “The darkness was closing in. I was scrambling to get to my car, but it was like there were shadows everywhere around me that just – enveloped me, I tried to call out, but then – nothing. And then this place, this awful place, I was constantly running from the shadows but it never stopped being dark – God, I thought I was dead, I thought I was dead and in hell, how the fuck am I in a hospital?”

Jack had forgotten about the hand on his shoulder until it gripped him impossibly tighter.

“You’re not dead,” the doctor says, a little more empathy trickling into their voice. “You’ve been a missing person for a little less than five years. The date is November 1, 2019. You disappeared outside of your house in Los Angeles on January 15, 2015, that’s the memory you were speaking of, yes?” 

“Yeah, I guess,” Jack says, a sudden lump in his throat. Five years. Well, he _had_ thought he was dead. That was better, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it better that he wasn’t dead? “So then where was that place? I know it had something to do with – with Perdition Wood, that was in my…”

Jack’s stomach coils to the point where he thinks he might throw up – and really, it would be a miracle of the highest order if he was even capable of throwing up since to his knowledge he hadn’t eaten anything in the past five fucking years – at the sudden barrage of memories from before the darkness took over.

It had always been there, it was following him, it was in the voicemails on his phone and underneath the floorboards, it was always there, always waiting for him, waiting for him to make a wrong move so it could eat him up and Jack had tried to stop it, but he’d been too late.

The doctor doesn’t answer his question. There’s nothing but silence, silence and whatever Jack can’t see.

A new voice, one he hasn’t heard yet, doesn’t recognize, pipes up.

“Um, we call it the Void. It’s this kind of like, alternative reality, it can take people, snatches them up out of thin air. Perdition Woods has a gateway to it, but there are others, it can reach out further, which is what happened with, well, you. The Science Institute has been experimenting with it, trying to extend its reach out into the world so they can pick off whoever they want and put them inside –”

“What about that thing?” Jack interrupts. “That – that monster, the one that kept following me, the one that kept playing out those false memories in my head, who could show me light and then take it away? Where’s he? Is he – is this just some kind of hallucination that he created? It feels real, but. It’s still so goddamn dark…”

“The Shadowmaker,” the voice continues, vibrating with a kind of nervous energy. “That’s what we call him. He’s – well, we distracted him while we were getting you out. It was – well, I won’t get into that. But he’s still out there, he’s probably angry, actually –”

“Ben,” another voice, a female one this time, says quietly but sharply. “Maybe this isn’t the time for that.”

“Right, right, sorry,” the voice that now has a name, Ben, Ben who? says. “We’ll – we’ll deal with that later. Sorry.”

“Ben? Do I know you? You don’t sound familiar,” Jack says, just wanting to understand, just wanting this to make any kind of sense. “I just – I don’t understand how anyone knew I was there. The only person who would’ve had any idea –”

He can’t finish the sentence, bile in his throat.

There’s silence in the room around him, until Ben’s voice finally breaks it again. “Are the two of you ever going to _say_ something?”

“Who else is here?” Jack says, shrinking in on himself. There was the doctor, there was Ben, there was the female voice – oh, there was still a hand on his shoulder, that was four, but if there were two people who hadn’t said anything yet, so that was at least five. “I just – can’t fucking _see_ …”

There’s more silence that’s finally interrupted by a female voice a little behind him, off to the side. “Jack. It’s me.”

“I – fuck, Lily, is that you?” Jack chokes out, tears suddenly springing to his eyes. At least his eyes are good for something.

He feels a hand, tentative on his own, and he squeezes it tight enough to break. He can’t tell that it’s Lily just from touch alone, but when she huffs out a laugh, he can tell it’s her.

“Good to see you,” Lily says, her voice more than a little choked up, too, and Lily never cries. “It’s been awhile.”

So long – so fucking long – not just the years Jack’s been missing, fuck he was missing for five years – but the four years before that too, it had been so long since he’d been in the same room with his older sister.

“How’d you know where to find me?” Jack asks when he feels in control enough to talk. “I know I mentioned King Falls on the phone with you, but that was – was way before any of the shadows started following me.”

“Don’t give me the credit,” Lily says softly, distinctly unlike herself. “I – I only got here two years ago. I thought you were dead, kid. I came here to find a body.”

“I thought I was dead too,” Jack says, no small amount of wonderment at the feeling of his sister’s hand on top of his. There’s no one else he’d rather be here with him except for – well, the obvious. “Lily, did you call – call our parents?”

“Not yet,” Lily says, her voice quavering just a little. “I’m not sure – well, I’m not sure what I’m going to say, actually. I don’t think they’ll believe me.”

She lets out a breathless laugh. It’s so good to hear her voice.

“When you call them,” Jack says hesitantly. “Can you call Sammy, too? I know you hate him, and he probably doesn’t want to hear from me anyway after the shit I put him through with the shadows – God, I was horrible, I’m surprised he didn’t leave me then – but I want him to know I’m alive.”

“Jack,” Lily says, sounding more than a little helpless, and why does she sound like she’s half-crying? “Jack, that’s really not going to be necessary.”

Jack’s about to ask what the matter is – he can’t imagine what Sammy’s life is now, what Sammy did without him, but Jack hopes he’s happy, that he’s doing something that makes him happy. That’s all he ever wanted for Sammy, and always wished that he was better at being Sammy’s boyfriend because Sammy deserved so, so much more than Jack –

“Jack,” a voice says on his other side that’s so, so painfully familiar in a way nothing else could be. The hand on his shoulder squeezes even more tightly. “I’m right here.”

“ _Sammy_ ,” Jack chokes back a sob, moves without realizing he’s moving, out of Lily’s grasp and into the general direction of Sammy’s voice, and God, this is still so familiar, the feeling of Sammy’s chest pressed against his, Sammy’s head pressed against his shoulder, Jack’s hand in his hair.

“Your hair feels long,” Jack mumbles into Sammy’s shoulder because he doesn’t know what else can say right now, a million emotions flooding his system.

“My hair _is_ long,” Sammy says brokenly into Jack’s neck, and he’s so familiar in every possible way, so solid and warm, Jack can almost believe he’s real, that he’s not imagining this.

“What are you doing here?” Jack holds even tighter, finding the place where Sammy’s hair met his neck, letting his fingers run over it. “ _How_ are you here? I was dead, God, I thought I was dead, I never thought I’d see you again.”

“What do you think? I followed you here, I can’t believe you wouldn’t think I’d follow you,” Sammy makes a move like he’s going to pull away, but Jack doesn’t let him, keeps holding on. “And I never thought you were dead, not ever, Jack.”

“Five years,” Jack says, a little faintly. “Have you really been here for five years looking for me?”

“Of course I was,” Sammy says as if nothing in the world could be more obvious and Jack wants to cry. “I must have been a much worse boyfriend than I thought I was if you don’t believe that.”

“You’re – Sammy, you were great,” Jack says, realizing how open they are when they’re talking a second too late, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care anymore. “It was me, it was all me, me and that fucking notebook and pushing you away and the way I would _scream_ at you those last few weeks – God, I was out of my mind, I was going insane, but I thought maybe you’d be safe from it if it just took me, that maybe it would leave you alone. I can’t justify it – I can’t even tell you exactly what happened, everything in my head is so fucked up right now – God, Sammy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for doing this to you, I’m so goddamn sorry –”

“No, no, it’s on me, it’s on me because I didn’t take you seriously,” Sammy says, one of his hands curling around Jack’s neck. “Everything that’s happened – it’s my fault, it’s my fault that I couldn’t get you out for five fucking years –”

“You saved me, you saved my life, you gave up your life to find me, how can I ever –” Jack can’t even finish the thought, just breathes in deeply, trying to get a sense of Sammy around him, wishing more than anything he could just see him.

“Wow,” Ben’s voice – Jack had forgotten there were others in the room – says bemusedly. “Never thought I’d meet someone as willing to blame themselves for things outside of human control as Sammy, but the more you know.”

Sammy laughs weakly into Jack’s shoulder. “Jack, this is Ben. He’s my best friend, and the only reason – the _only_ reason – you’re back here at all. It’s all him.”

“It was a team effort,” Ben declares, and Jack thinks maybe he’s glaring at Sammy, but can’t tell.

“Maybe we should give them some privacy,” the female voice from earlier says quietly. “Hi, Jack, I’m Emily, by the way. I’m also one of Sammy’s friends, but we can have introductions later. You guys should be alone right now.”

“I’ll go, too,” Lily says from Jack’s other side, her hand on his shoulder for just a second. “I’ll…call our parents. Wow. That’s…”

She sighs, a little wistful, mostly happy, and then there’s shuffling out the room, but the doctor says first “I’ll be back in ten minutes to check his vitals.”

Jack can tell that he and Sammy are alone because there’s a tension in the way Sammy holds himself that Jack can feel deflate under his hands.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Jack says, his hand clumsily reaching out for Sammy’s, searching for it until Sammy takes pity on him and grabs it, holds it tightly. “That you’re real. I thought the only time I’d ever see you again was in a hallucination. God, Sammy.”

Sammy doesn’t response for a second, and Jack realizes it’s because he’s crying, his tears hot and heavy against Jack’s shoulder, and Jack can’t do anything but tighten his grip and whisper that it was alright.

“All I’ve ever wanted was to see you again,” Sammy says, his voice trembling. “All I’ve ever wanted. All I’ll _ever_ want.”

“Me too,” Jack says, nothing ever truer. “I wish I could see you, God, I wish I could see anything but black right now, but especially you.”

“I look different,” Sammy says, sounding almost embarrassed by it, but Jack shushes him.

“I don’t care,” Jack says. “I’m sure I look like hell rolled over right now, because that’s what I feel like.”

Sammy laughs, a watery hiccup, but Jack knows that it’s just confirming his suspicions about what a mess he looks like right now.

“You’re here, you still love me – that’s a fucking miracle,” Jack says but Sammy cuts him off.

“God, Jack, you’re the miracle here, not me,” Sammy says. “I’m just an idiot who was too stupid to see what was happening to you and too slow to save you from it. I’m so sorry, I should’ve done something more, I should’ve –”

“Shut up,” Jack says, stroking a hand through Sammy’s long, knotted, tangled hair. It feels different, and he doesn’t care, because it still feels like Sammy. “Just shut up. I love you, God, I love you so much, I don’t care about anything else but that you’re here.”

Sammy chokes back a sob, and when Jack finally moves apart from him long enough to look, the tears in his eyes blur a picture in front of him – fuzzy and not quite put together, the features still obscure, the details hazy, but he can make out the shape, he can make out Sammy there staring at him, and Jack can’t help it.

He crashes his lips against Sammy’s, trying to put five years worth of _I’m sorrys_ into the kiss and hope that Sammy understands.


End file.
